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Media influences on public opinion
Media impact on public opinion and policy making
How the media impacts public behaviour and opinion
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In recent years, there has been a gender shift in crime dramas on television. In the 70s, 80s, and early 90s, the viewer saw the lead characters to be heavily male dominated with a woman thrown in for mostly sex appeal. The shift from the stereotypical nuclear family, with a stay-at-home mom, has impacted many genres of television programing and exemplified in Paul Cantor’s “The Simpson: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family,” when referring to the deviation from a historic ideal family “in fact [the breakdown] should be regarded as a form of liberation from an image of the family that may have been good enough for the 1950’s but is no longer valid in the 1990’s” (737). Popular television has extracted “women” from their “household” and fitting her with a pair of trousers in lieu of a kitchen apron. Nowadays, most crime dramas are either gender balanced or even female dominated. As this shift has occurred, many new issues began to spawn. Having female lead characters in these types of dramas allow younger female viewers to see that females are capable of working in a usually male dominated workplace and hold positions of power and leadership. The shifting of power roles in crime dramas provide young female viewers with prominent role models, through unrealistic character portrayal by lead actresses, often undermining the realities of the motherhood.
Many current crime dramas give younger female viewers female role models in professionally powerful positions. Studies have shown that law and criminal based television genre has had a tremendous influence on career choices in forensic science on young viewers (qtd. in O’Donnell “Sample Criticism” (216). An example of this popular trend is Law and Order: SVU who commonly casts ...
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...lture, it is imperative we understand the messaging that is permitted in the home.
Works Cited
Cantor, Paul A. “The Simpsons: Atomistic Politics and the Nuclear Family.” Pop
Perspectives: Readings to Critique Contemporary Culture. Ed. Laura Grey-
Rosendale. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2008.463-476. Print.
Gerbner, George. “Society’s Storyteller: How TV Creates the Myth by Which We
Live.” Common Culture 7th Edition. Boston: Pearson, 2012. 117-122.
Jermyn, Deborah. “Women with a Mission: Lynda La Plante, DCI Jane Tennison and the Reconfiguration of TV Crime Drama.” International Journal of Cultural
Studies 6.46 (2003): 46-63. Print.
O’Donnell, Victoria. “Sample Criticism of a Television Program: ‘CSI: Crime Scene
Investigation.’” Television Criticism. Los Angeles: Sage Publications, 2007.
215-227. Print.
In her blog Bolick (2011) stated that “I grew up watching both I love Lucy and The Honeymooners and even as a child I always wondered why the wives on these shows didn’t have to work.” Women in television shows decades ago mirrored the roles women played in society. Yet, women in society, although they have made major progressions towards equality they are still portrayed as the housewife. For the first time, America has a woman running for President of the United States. But parents think that children do not have suitable role models because of what they see on television. Does that fault fall on producers of television shows and movies? Or on the parent for allowing the children to watch those shows? Children look up to people in their immediate presence the most, imitating what they see and are accustomed to the most. With the changes in of roles in television, however, society is still noticing the unimportant things. During a recent study conducted by “The Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film” Lauzen (2016) stated that “Moviegoers were more likely to know the occupation of male characters than female characters…… In addition, moviegoers were much more likely to see male characters at work and actually working than female characters.” What this shows is that people have become so accustomed to the way society ‘used to be’ that they pay attention to the details
The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.
On September 20, 1984 a show aired that changed the way we view gender roles on television. Television still perpetuates traditional gender stereotypes and in reflecting them TV reinforces them by presenting them as the norm (Chandler, 1). The Cosby Show, challenged the typical gender stereotyping of television, daring to go against the dominant social values of its time period. In its challenge of the dominant social view, the show redefined the portrayal of male and female roles in television. It redefined the gender role in the work place, in social expectations, and in household responsibilities. The Cosby Show supported Freidan in her view of “castigating the phony happy housewife heroine of the women’s magazines” (Douglas 136).
Walklate, S. (2001) Gender, Crime and Criminal Justice. 1st ed. Cullompton: Willan Publishing. Press. 26
In American culture today, women continue the struggle of identifying what their roles in society are supposed to be. Our culture has been sending mixed messages to the modern day female, creating a sense of uneasiness to an already confusing and stressful world. Although women today are encouraged more than ever to be independent, educated, and successful, they are often times shamed for having done just that. Career driven females are frequently at risk of being labeled as bossy, unfeminine, or selfish for competing in many career paths that were once dominated by men. A popular medium in our culture such as television continues to have significant influences as to how people should aspire to live their lives. Viewers develop connections with relatable characters and to relationship dynamics displayed within their favorite shows. Fictional characters and relationships can ultimately influence a viewer’s fashion sense, social and political opinion, and attitude towards gender norms. Since the days of Bewitched and I Dream of Jeanie, where women were commonly portrayed as being the endearing mischievous housewife, television shows have evolved in order to reflect real life women who were becoming increasingly more independent, educated, and career oriented throughout the subsequent decades. New genres of television are introduced, such as the workplace comedy, where women are not only career oriented, but eventually transition into positions of power.
Despite the fact that the character of Phyllis as the “tough as nails” perpetual, intentional aggressor is a valid attempt to obliterate the image of women as the oppressed, one interpretation of this role is that she ultimately seems to misrepresent herself, and females in cinema, anyway. Janet Todd, author of Women and Film, states that, “Women do not exist in American film. Instead we find another creation, made by men, growing out of their ideological imperatives”(130). Though these “power girl”characters are strong examples of anything but submissive and sexual females,the...
For a large part of the history of TV sitcoms women have been portrayed as mothers or as having to fulfill the woman's role in the private sphere. Family based sitcoms were one of the forms of sitcom that keep women in these roles, but what is interesting is that even in other forms of sitcoms women do not truly escape these roles. Sitcoms, like Sex and the City and Murphy Brown showcase women whom have seemingly escaped these roles, by showing liberated women, but that does not mean that both do not fall into the gender role showcased in family sitcoms. It draws the similarities between ensemble sitcoms and family sitcoms when it comes down to the role of women. The starring women in both Sex and the City and Murphy Brown, and even the Mary
Over decades, television shows have reflected the social changes of the family structure. Starting with the 1960’s, a family commonly consisted of parents and their children. Nuclear families, with parents and children, embodied shows like Leave it to Beaver and The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriett. Family was everything to people back in the day. People lived to create and spend time with their family. Television shows were emerging steadily and became popular. Also, television was a main source for families to bond over, and it influenced the behavior of family members. Leave it to Beaver and Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet played a major role in shaping the family structures. During the 1960’s, middle-class white families dominated television shows. Situation and family drama’s mainly influenced the traditional family structure (Television and Family 1). In Leave it to Beaver, the focus was on the ideal suburban family in the fifties through the sixties. The show was mild and the spotlight was more on the children in the family compared to the adults. The theme presented was a happy and loving family (Cox 1). The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet was an enduring family-based comedy on television. For decades, the Nelson family symbolized a wholesome and normal family. Their main focus was to epitomize a happy, upright family life (Wesblat 1)....
For the course of weeks spent in social issues I have decided to choose my topic on Portraits of Girls in the Criminal Justice System. I believe it’s important to acknowledge that the variety of murders and crimes committed is not only done by men but woman as well commit these crimes. As generations have passed by it has been seen that gender roles have changed woman are now more involved with crimes.
Classical and contemporary theory helps to explain gendered crime patterns. The feminist school of criminology argue criminology and criminal theory is very masculine, all studies into criminal behaviour, have been developed from male statistics and tested on males. Very little research is conducted into female criminality, this may be because women who commit crime are more likely to be seen as evil or mentally ill rather than criminal, this is because women are labe...
The media is by far the most influential mean in millions of Americans lives today and can be used to impact behaviors, especially in the vulnerable minds of children and young adults. The media is responsible for the increasing amount of violent crimes and desensitizing society with explicit imagery and the importance of our culture and contributing to negative behavior, society should pay careful attention to the kinds of role models we provide to the youth. Possibly, the most powerful source of role models can be found in every home: the computer or television. Television is a source that has given more knowledge in the past several years than any other kind of knowledge distributor, including books and newspapers. Television is the most dominant invention of the twentieth century and has created more public figures than radio, books, and magazines combined. However, the role models that are created through the television are not always upstanding citizens like Barrack Obama or Steve Jobs, but instead psychopathic murderers such as Jeffery Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Charles Manson. Not only is society fascinated by the media attention that certain types of citizens receive but they are also mesmorized by films that make these people look like tough fighters who can kill people with the snap of a finger. Actors such as Steven Segall, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Bruce Willis have have capitalized in violent films because of the media exposure as killers and murderers.
In the following literature review, scholarly and peer-reviewed journals, articles from popular news media, and surveys have been synthesized to contribute to the conversation pertaining to forensics in pop culture in the courtroom and the overall criminal justice system. This conversation has become a growing topic of interest over just the past few years since these crime shows started appearing on the air. The rising popularity of this genre makes this research even more relevant to study to try to bring back justice in the courtroom.
The classic network era is one of the most easily recognizable and distinct eras in television history. Both Bewitched and I Love Lucy were huge sitcoms that took up issues of gender representation and patriarchy in their programs through the representations of the main male and female characters of their respective series. While both of these series pushed boundaries when it came to the representation of women, in the end, the costuming of these men and women, how the main characters are introduced, and the domestic environment that the atmosphere takes place in, all serve to reinforce traditional gender norms and reveals that patriarchy is dependent on maintaining dominant ideas about masculinity and femininity.
From past to present, men have dominated women in media. Media is a big part of people’s everyday lives. It influences how we see ourselves and the world. There are many different types of media like movies, television shows, newspapers, advertisements, etc. In these different forms of media, there are images of men and women who are represented in different ways and characteristics. In both films, Changeling (2008) and The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio (2005), a woman, not a man is the main character. These two movies are based off of a true story from a woman’s perspective. This type of genre portrays women in the past and very well may be the same as the present. This movie shows the life of a mother in Los Angeles in 1928 who works constantly
In the article, Compromising Positions, Kathleen Collins writes about how the television, especially family television shows, portray women. She believes that even still today television shows like Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, or the home improvement shows like Merge and Mix It Up, women are still portrayed as "housewives who bustle and cluck while their hapless husbands do little more than hand out spending money (Collins, par. 1)." She believes that these shows "reinforce old prejudices regarding women's emotional ties to the home rather then challenging assumptions about which gender likes what kind of living environment and why (Collins, par. 17)."